


April's Lady

by NephthysMoon



Category: Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-25
Updated: 2012-07-25
Packaged: 2017-11-10 16:44:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/468479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NephthysMoon/pseuds/NephthysMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles for the LJ challenge Angsty April 2012.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Unlikely Alliance

She tugged his arm. "Jadeite, we have to go!" and shook her head. Whoever thought she'd be saying those words? A pang. A kick in the stomach. Whatever you'd want to call it. There it was. Uranus had tried to kill her. Uranus, Venus and Jupiter had tried to kill her. Jadeite was her only ally now. If Pluto had survived - well, she'd hope for the best, but experience had taught her that preparing for the worst was always better.   
  
"We need to go  _now_ !" she shouted, pulling on his arm.   
  
"That's my home, you fucking twit!" he screamed, looking down at her as though she were completely without sense.   
  
"No, that was the home Endymion gave you, when he believed you to be loyal to him," she said, coldly. "He has been using you for six thousand years, and look around you. Look at what he's done to your home! Look at it!" She grabbed his jaw and forced his eyes to look at the structure he'd lived in for so long. "Six thousand years he's forced you live in a ruin! That is what your King has done. He has covered this whole world in the darkness of his Queen and you have to help me save it - save  _him_ ! I can't do it by myself!" She fought back a sob.   
  
He stared at the shattered ruin of what had once been his family's proud home and then he sat, silent and broken, on the hillside for long moments. She stood over him, waiting for him to make his decision, praying to the goddess above that she wouldn't have to take on Endymion and three of his shitennou, plus three Senshi, alone. When he finally spoke, the question was the only one she'd dreaded.   
  
"Why is it you coming to me? Where is she?" his voice was broken and she tried to keep her face from falling. "Where. Is. She?"   
  
"Dead." Katsumi took a deep breath, her blonde hair rippling in the wind. "I could hear her screams - they came through the halls of the palace - even into his chambers. You know he has the Senshi doing his dirty work." It wasn't a question, but he nodded anyway. "As best I can tell, they were trying to turn her. He was so dispassionate when he spoke of it. He was - using me while they were killing her. I could hear her screaming." Her legs gave out and she collapsed next to him.    
  
He turned to her, and one arm snaked gently around her shoulders. "She went down fighting, then?"    
  
"She did," she nodded, leaning her head on his shoulder, feeling the wind dry the tears that had slipped down her cheeks. "She took down seventeen of his men."   
  
"Then she had a warrior's death, and that's all Mars would have wanted," he said, standing up and pulling her to her feet. "Now, you said we had to go?"


	2. Until We Meet Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :I know that Zoisite is the Shitennou of European lands, whatever you want to call them. I tend to line them up with the Cardinal directions and something is telling me I always line him up with the South, though I'm not sure where I got that information. It's so hard to tell canon from fanon with these guys. Forgive my artistic liberty, please.

"The surgery was a success," the young doctor said, a smile on her face. And in truth, she was happy that it gone well. She was always pleased when one of her surgeries saved a life. But she could never quite forgive herself for not saving the life of the person whose organs had been harvested to make each one possible. This case had been particularly hard.   
  
The young man had come in with multiple injuries, but there was no family members anxiously waiting for him. No one for her to give grave looks to; no difficult questions she wasn't always sure how to answer. He had come in, been prepped for surgery and died alone on her table, and it was a rare enough occurrence for it to haunt her. The only identification they'd been able to find was a driver's license and someone was still trying to locate his next of kin; it seemed he didn't have any. He'd registered as an organ donor, so she'd made the transplant, hoping that she was fulfilling some final wish he'd had, knowing that his sacrifice would enable the other to live on, but it still hurt.   
  
There was no next-of-kin, she kept thinking. He'd have no proper burial, end up cremated in the hospital morgue and sent away to some nameless place where those who have no loved ones go upon their deaths. It haunted her. She stepped quickly out of the room where joy was the theme and made her way to the morgue.   
  
"Dr. Mizuno, what can I do for you?" the attendant asked, and Ami smiled a little hesitantly.   
  
"The heart donor - Zacharias Maberly," she began, "has anyone claimed the remains?"   
  
"No, I was getting ready to prep him," the other woman said softly.   
  
"I'd like to make the arrangements for his services," Ami said, her blue eyes wary. Would she be allowed to do this?   
  
"That's very good of you," the attendant said with a smile. "So few of our doctors here would do that. The only other one I can think of is Chiba, actually."   
  
Ami smiled without really listening. The attendant gave her the information for the funeral home the morgue used and Ami whipped out her cell and stepped outside to make the call.    
  
Three days later, she released her transplant patient into a recovery facility and drove herself to a silent graveyard, where no one stood but the priest and the gravediggers around the casket she'd chosen.   
  
When she arrived at the gravesite, she nodded to the priest and the old man began the service. "The Lord bless you and keep you," he droned, and Ami allowed her tears to fall freely. It was heartbreaking that this young man would have no other mourners. She felt a soft hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Dr. Chiba sitting beside her. He offered her a bracing smile as the priest finished his benediction.   
  
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust."   
  
The unsung hero was lowered into his grave with only two roses to adorn his casket; one from a doctor he'd never met, and one from the woman who'd tried to save him, and had ended up using his heart to save someone else instead. Ami stood by the grave and watched as the first shovels of dirt were tossed into the hole, knowing she'd never know the man who lay beneath the stone and unsure why she'd had the inscription put on it that she had.   
  
In later years, she would come to visit him often, this man she'd lost. And always, she would wonder why the inscription under his name and the dates that he'd lived - far too narrow a margin, in her opinion - had come to her.   
  
_Be at peace, Zoisite of the South, until we meet again_ .


	3. Lost To Darkness

"We were  _yours_ , Endymion," he said hoarsely, "Yours to command, yours to train - yours to love. It was all we wanted from you. For twenty years, we stood by your side. We were  _raised with you_ ." His sword was out, but the tip was on the ground as he looked imploringly up at his former commander, his former friend. "We never knew our parents. We were chosen from birth to be your companions. It was our noble privilege. It was our right. Our duty. And we were raised to consider it an honor. We were more than just your companions, we were once your brothers. Your family was ours. AND YOU TURNED YOUR BACK ON US!" He screamed the last, his voice raw and ragged, tears of rage pouring down his face; the once emotionless general full of dark energy that opened those floodgates, letting loose all he'd once held in.   
  
"I never stopped loving you, any of you," Endymion said quietly; calm in the face of Kunzite's fury. His sword was still in its scabbard at his side. "You are all still my brothers. You've merely let the witch turn you so that you can no longer see that I love you."   
  
"That's a lie!" he spat, raising the sword. "Draw your sword. Defend yourself!" He shouted.   
  
"No." The refusal was soft, but absolute.   
  
"DO IT!" Kunzite screamed, his rage making him mindless.   
  
"I will not. If you're determined to kill me, then you'll kill me. But I don't wish to fight you, and if you'll kill me without honor, then I can at least hope that some day you will see that she has turned you into something you are not," Endymion said into the silence.   
  
"If you won't fight like a man, then die like the coward you are," Kunzite said coldly, darkness filling his eyes. He rushed his former Master, the sword spitting him. For a moment, the dark haze in his vision cleared, and something that almost felt like regret - remorse - dropped him to his knees, but it passed, pushed aside by rage and hatred and he stood again, a cruel smile lighting his face as he heard a high, girlish voice in the distance.   
  
"Endymion!"   
  
"You're next," he whispered, turning towards the Princess.


	4. Angel Serenity

Once she had been a Princess. Mukarramma-Mesi. Now, she was merely this golden mask, long since forgotten under the sands of this endless desert. Someday, she would be unearthed, but now, thanks to the ancient rituals of her time, which were supposed to help her spirit pass into the next world, she was bound to this one. She would unleash her fury at this long confinement upon the unfortunate mortals that found her.    


* * *

  
Thousands of years later, the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian Princess Mukarramma-Mesi found its way into the hold of a British frigate as it sailed across the Atlantic. It was a heavily armed cargo ship, carrying mostly supplies and goods to the British outposts in the West Indies, captained by a fool who thought to line his pockets by trading the mummy to the soldiers there instead of delivering it to the British museum, as he'd been commanded. Also on board his vessel were two passengers. Travel by ship was heavily dangerous, for the upstart colonials, in their bid for independence, were taking any ship they could capture, but the young woman, barely out of mourning for her sister, had little choice. Marianne Hale, second (and now only) daughter of the ship's owner, was to marry Lord Daltry, her late sister, Serenity's, fiance, who was stationed in Barbados with his fleet.    
  
Nothing but love for her sister and her father could have convinced Marianne to do such a thing, Raimunde knew. Raimunde had been Marianne's maid for three years, and she knew that while her mistress was a dutiful daughter, she was also a romantic. But what the Fool, nor Raimunde, Marianne, nor Mukarramma-Mesi, nor indeed, anyone aboard the frigate could possibly know, was that two days prior, the Serenity, the ship Marianne's father had commissioned lovingly in his daughter's memory, with a figurehead made in her likeness, was speeding towards them, captured by Black Kael, an American Privateer known for his ruthlessness - and known to all the British to take no prisoners.   


* * *

  
Black Kael, however, was in no shape to worry about prisoners, or indeed anything at all. As the Serenity was drawing upon the Lunette, he was lying in his new quarters, unconscious from a blow to the head that he'd suffered in taking the Serenity, having the most peculiar dream.   
  
"Oh, do wake up already," a clear voice tinkled, and he winced at the high tone.   
  
"Go away," he muttered, his eyes still closed.   
  
"Not likely, Captain," he heard Zach say cheerfully. Zacharias Colton was the ship's medic, and if he was sitting up with him, Kael knew his condition must be serious.   
  
"Not you, Zach," Kael explained hoarsely. Damn, but his throat was dry. "The naked wench with the wings."   
  
A hearty laugh came across his quarters, which seemed to be far more luxurious than they should be. "Leave it to Kael to have hallucinations of naked angels."   
  
"They can't see me, you know," the girlish voice spoke again. "No one can but you. And it's not like I chose to appear naked. Apparently it's the fashion statement up there," she whispered. He could swear she rolled her eyes. "But I suggest you get rid of all of them so we can talk, unless you'd like them to think you've gone stark, raving mad." Her voice was quite cheerful, as if she thought she might rather like to see that. He groaned.   
  
"Out," he muttered, deciding to humor the apparition. "All of you, out of here!" The men looked at each other quietly for a moment, and then filed out, looking back at him askance.   
  
"Ah, that's much better," she said. "Now, I can result to parlor tricks to convince you that I'm real, if you like, or you can take me at my word. My name is - or rather was - Serenity Hale. And it appears that the powers that be have decided that I was far too frivolous in my life to become an angel, so they've given you to me. If I can make you into a 'good' man, then I get to go on to heaven. If not - well, then - I don't. You see my dilemma, of course. I appear to have my work cut out for me."   
  
Kael muttered something under his breath about her ancestry. She looked at him, and laughed coldly. "Oh, now that was't very nice. I definitely have my work cut out for me. First, I think we need to get your crew to have a little more faith in you, after that little scene. Let's see - if you follow this course, I promise you'll have everything you could ever want."    
  
Kael looked at her again, making sure he took in the full, lush figure before him as he did so. "Why the hell not?"   


* * *

  
In a short time, the Lunette was downed, the Fool was dead, and Black Kael found himself face to face with a petite blonde screeching at him that he had stolen her father's ship. He realized soon what Serenity had meant by 'everything he could ever want'. And he intended to take it.   
  
So he did. With the specter of her sister watching, he seduced the innocent Marianne until she trembled beneath him, begging him to take her. Serenity shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks. He smiled up at her wickedly, as if to say, "It's all your fault."   
  
Nick, first mate and Navigator, prayed to the goddess Juno, hoping that she would guide him to the right stars to lead them into safe waters. Zach inventoried the cargo they picked up from the Lunette, noting with fascination the dirty gold sarcophagus of what appeared to be a beautiful young woman. And James, the ship's cook, flirted with Marianne's maid, never noticing what she slipped into the batch of stew he made for the men.   
  
When he had sated himself on her body, Kael fed Marianne the rich, meaty stew that James delivered personally to the quarters, deciding he would feed himself when she'd had her fill. After three bites, she fell to the floor, and her sister's wails shattered her eardrums.   
  
Mukarramma-Mesi heard the wails of another lost soul, heard the moans of the dying crewmen, and knew that her time to rise had come. Her spirit rose from the brittle bones of her mummy and appeared before the ship's medic, and she smiled.    
  
"You, I will spare," she said, not unkindly, "from the horror I will wreck upon the others."    
  
Her spirit rushed through his heart and he crumpled instantly, but when she rose to the deck, there were few left standing, and those unable to see her - she wondered if she had made a mistake in destroying the one who had been able to see her spirit.    
  
Serenity rose to the clouds and called upon the ancient goddess. "I no longer wish to join the heavens. With Marianne dead, there is nothing left for me to watch over. Help me, I beg of you, and I will belong to you," she begged.   
  
"You know that there is no returning from this path," Juno warned. "Once you pledge yourself to me, you cannot rescind that."   
  
"Give me my vengeance, and I will care not." Serenity's voice was cold, her eyes empty.   
  
"It is yours."   
  
The ship veered suddenly, and Raimunde, rushing to her mistress' side when she realized what she had done, was flung overboard, sucked into the waves below. The reef tore a hole the size of a large cannonball in the hull, below the waterline, and the ship began to sink, rapidly. Within moments, the entire crew was lost.   
  
Mukarramma-Mesi sank into her sarcophagus, trapped once more to the plane of existence she'd so hated, with even less chance of freedom as before, while Serenity and Juno watched from above as the souls of those who'd perished either by poisoning or drowning fled the ship.   
  
"Come, my acolyte. We have much to do." Juno pulled Serenity away before she could witness the departure of Marianne's soul, before she could experience the regret that she could not join it; that regret that her quest for vengeance would surely soon cause her.


	5. Her Gray Havens

Where was her Gray Havens, she wondered after they finished the movies. She and the others had been redeemed, that was true. As far as anyone else knew, she was the same Usagi she'd always been - before.    
  
Before she stepped into the looking glass, as it were, and become the Queen of the Dark Kingdom. Before she'd stolen Endymion's most loyal subjects and bound them to her. There were things that had happened there - she and Jadeite still couldn't look each other in the face, ten years later. Before she'd tried to kill her friends and her lover to avenge the death of her kingdom, the kingdom she had so desperately tried to escape in her past life.   
  
Before she'd become corrupted by the shard of Chaos that had found her that lonely day and whisked her away to rule the world. Her world was dead, but his still lived. Why shouldn't she steal his and his men? They'd betrayed him before, and they betrayed him again.   
  
Kunzite watched her often, she knew. He couldn't reconcile the Serenity of the Dark Kingdom with the Usagi of 'before'. Nephrite smiled at her sadly from time to time, as though he had seen her future and he worried for her. Sometimes Zoisite composed new music and let her hear it before anyone else - his way of saying that she was forgiven.   
  
Everyone forgave her, it seemed. Mamoru lived to tell her how much she was loved and the Senshi seemed to do the same.   
  
But it wasn't 'before'. It was after. After she'd tried to kill them. After she'd tried to take over the world. And in the 'after', she didn't know who she was any longer. In all the stories, the one who had to carry the great evil for so long was granted peace, but peace eluded her.   
  
The others left and she went to bed, Mamoru tucking himself around her. When she awoke, it was to the bright white lights of the hospital.    
  
I go now to the West, she thought, her mind processing things slowly.   
  
"Usa," Mamoru said, looking down at her desperately. "Why?"   
  
The others were silently echoing the question, and she gathered her strength to answer as best she could.   
  
"I can't be the Usagi of before, and I can't stand the Usagi of after," she said softly. She saw the knowledge in his face, and she looked to her loyal servants for that time. Kunzite held her gaze unflinchingly; if he followed her, she would not be surprised. Nephrite shook his head sadly. Zoisite cried. And Jadeite still refused to look at her. But that was fine, she thought, her body aching so much that she could barely breathe. It was better than fine. Soon she would be past all of this. The would be no more before, no more after. No more memories of horrors she'd committed.   
  
Soon.   
  
I go now to the West, she thought, closing her eyes for a final time. The arsenic had been easy to buy, easy to disguise on the powdered donuts. And now, she thought, I have found my Gray Havens.    
  
"Be at peace, my queen," Jadeite said softly when she stopped breathing, his eyes fixed on her face.


End file.
